A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism by Jeffrey D Sachs

Review by Qamar-ul Huda, PhD

Jeffrey D Sachs is a renowned sustained development, anti-poverty, and macroeconomics expert who wrote A New Foreign Policy as a robust criticism against the Trump’s administration ‘America First’ policy. Since the end of World War II, Sachs argues, the world order was more organised with an engaged America not an America solely occupied with its own national interests. This shift in retreating as a global leader will have powerful ripple effects on mass migration, poverty, environmental disaster, and political upheaval.

Sachs served as a Special Advisor to the UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and previously advised UN General-Secretary Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. He is university professor at Columbia University who teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) is a proponent of the UN as a medium for resolving conflicts.

A New Foreign Policy carefully demonstrates how the American exceptionalism politics will downgrade a world order built on cooperation, multilateralism, and interconnected economies. Sachs argues the American exceptionalism adopted as a truism across American political parties has pushed America in unwinnable wars and become a hegemonic power in various regions of the world. This book is a bold vision for America to rethink, self-evaluate and self-examine its role in the world to reinforce collaboration and active engagement.